There is never a bad time for 2-4-1 dessert @ the slug and lettuce

Vikram's half eaten Chocolate brownie pudding with hot custard

 My Sticky Toffee Pudding with vanilla ice cream

On London Bridge - A quite evening in the lights and glitters of London

View of Tower Bridge from London Bridge

View of Tower Bridge from the other side

Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge fixation - Olympic rings

View of London Bridge

St. Paul's cathedral from London Bridge

View from our favorite spot which lies between London Bridge & Tower Bridge 

Best place to have chai in Delhi – My Favorite chai spots

In the city where coffee shops are mushrooming all around, where do you go for a cup of tea that is not flooded with water and tastes likes the tea that our Indian taste buds are more akin to. Well for a flavorful cup of chai that is sweet, spicey and milky try out the Passion cup of tea in Vasant Vihar. My personal favorite is ginger, saffron tea served in glasses that look like kullarhs burning hot. It could easily be the best tea I have ever had.

If you are into the cooler version of the drink then one of the places not to be missed is the Tea Shop in Noida. It’s a small shop which is a famous hangout for the college students at nearby private university. Deceptively, it looks like any other kiraana shop in a regular mohalla but what is unique is the khadi yet high quality feel of the place. The shop is owned by retired Captain Mehra who runs the place with his wife. The day to day management is taken care of by Narayan ji who is extremely friendly and courteous. He has worked with tea shop for over 10 years and so have the other employees. The menu is really simple with wide offerings in teas iced or hot, priced just right for a student’s pocket. The food menu is nothing extensive a few sandwiches, muffins and momos. My personal favourite is their unique drink which is by the way not tea, it is coffee. They call it Carribean coffee and it is coffee unlike I have ever had. Muffin and chicken salami is my favorite on their snacks menu. The tastes are nothing from the “must have” lists but the food is fresh and therefore always a good value for money. There is no seating except for the murraahs and stools outside the shop you can grab to sit and enjoy your tea with snacks over a conversation with your friends. Trust me this just goes on to add to Tea shop’s charm. Given the young intellectual college crowd, honest preparations, and connoisseur teas sold, Tea shop is one of my favorite places in NCR. 

The name is Majibul Rahman

Name: Majibul Rahman

Age: Does not  remember correctly should be between 32-35 years

Marital Status: Married with two kids for 4 years. Meets his wife twice in one years

Occupation: Rickshaw puller in New Delhi for 15 years now

Earnings: Rs. 200-250 ($4-5) per day on days he works

Residence: A small room in an “unauthorized” basti that now spans from Noida toll road to sector

Originally from:  some village I don’t even remember the name of now

Education: None

No, I don’t remember the village he comes from but I do remember being shocked when he told me that there is no electricity in his village. The nearest city to have electricity around his home is 15 kilometers away.

This is the bio data of a Rickshaw puller in Delhi. There are over a million more like him in Delhi who come from small villages we have never heard of and find “well paying” job as a rickshaw puller. There are millions of such Indians, who work as street vendors, maids, drivers, rag pickers and some who don’t find jobs work as beggars. I was walking around in Chandani Chowk with my friend the other day and I was stunned to discover the different ways in which an ordinary Indian makes money, feed herself and run her home. To clarify what an ordinary means is the one who doesn’t own a vehicle and work in an air conditioned office. Simply put someone who never files tax because s/he doesn’t make enough income.  Because there are still millions of people out there who have never logged on to the internet, who do not use facebook and who do not tweet!

I know I am not making any kind of a revelation. No! I am not saying we are a poor country with lots poor people around. I would let the foreign Goras coming in to make movies about that to let us know what we really are. What I felt after returning from United States is that India lives in layers and stratas. Its upper class never interacts with middle class. Its middle class very rarely maintain contacts with the lower middle class and brings up its children telling that the poor kids are not to be spoken to. We grow up mistrusting and mistreating the section of the society that does the most amount of physical labor and makes least money simply because they make less money.

How little I know an average Indian, (not an ordinary Indian), is something I realized when I spoke to one of the Rickshaw driver for the shoot of my documentary. He was kind enough to take us to his jhuggi. We sat there for an hour and he opened up his life to us in one conversation. It was a small room where he said up to 5 people could live at a time. There was a small fan on the ceiling, a lamp, an old suitcase, mat on the floor. A few papers, carry bags and clothes were piled on each other on a corner and he sat in the center. There was a tap right outside his room and one his neighbor was washing clothes outside his room. He said a room of his own in the basti could cost uptp Rs 30000.

He makes around Rs 4,000-5,000 a month after pulling his rickshaw everyday for 9-10 hours, pays around Rs 700 as his rent, Rs 300 as phone bill and sends Rs. 2,000-3,000 every month. Back home in his village in West Bengal he has his parents, his wife, and two kids. He has a small piece of land on which his family does farming. Sometimes they hire labourers at a daily wage rate of Rs. 100 per day.

While most rickshay walley in Delhi rent their Rickshaws from contractors who are referred to as “Rickshaw Mafias”, Majibul owns his rickshaw. When I asked Majibul about his problems a rickshaw wala, he had no complaints. What struck me the most in this conversation was that though from my perspective I could see his problems but from where he stood, he had a satisfactory life.  He had did not want anything more from his life. He did not have goals set in his mind or “stress” that gave high blood pressure at young age. In a small room he lived with a big heart. Even though we were strangers to him, he had the heart to let us into his home, offer us bottled water and Coke because he was so sure we wouldn’t drink water from the bottle he carried around for himself.

How many Indians and how much of India I really know I wonder now. A proud Dilliwali, I am, But how often have I tried understand how people live in the small jhuggis that we complain the landscape of Delhi. Who are these people who come small villages into big cities and do all sorts of jobs. Who are these who clean your table after you walk off from the Dhaba after a meal, who is the lady who cleans up my room, who is man who pulls me from home to Metro station on his rickshaw, who is the guy who sells me onions, who is the guy who cleans up my car each morning for Rs 250 a month and yet leaves my Rs. 500 back into dash board when I drop it in my car. Who are these people. Indians. My fellow Indians.  

Agent Vinod

The only reason why I attempted to watch this movie was to appreciate Kareena's chiseled looks. Her attempt to beat Katrina as a hot looking bimbo has been reaping good results so far. So, I was quite helpful this she will best her past attempts because it is for Saifu. But the movie is miserable, helpless and and the leads can't deliver the dialogues to save the day. They make even  powerful lines such as "mujhe meri zindagi wapis chahiye...jahaan Rubbaiyat ek khoobsurat poetry ki kitaab ho, nuclear detonator nahin" sound like a soggy bread! Soggy, tasteless, stale, dripping  bread!

do we love people simply because we love them or because we need them to love us...

clear the cobwebs

How do you know if the choice you made is your own or the one you have been programmed to make.How do you escape the learned behavior to make a choice that represents you above all. People knit the web of society to take away from you every ounce of individuality that there may be inside of you to make puppet out of you. You cant move out because web that was woven for you but you are weaving webs as well immobilizing others...that is how human society works with relations,emotions and ideas of needs fed in our heads from day 1.

Is this true or is it just another night of failure...where is whisky with namkeen!

Didn't you wish sometimes that your life was like a new gadget you bought which came with a manual on how to install it. The manual that told you what does what in your life and why you need all that you received and nothing really is a waste in the package. A booklet that answers all your queries on ' what do I do when this happens?' or 'what do I do when I need to get this done?' along with a call center number at the end always picked up by the over-enthusiastic people willing to help and trying to get feedback forms filled. You know at least the basic stuff should have been covered. Not asking for much...just a 'How to do it?' or 'Ins and Outs of it all' kind of thing handed over to us when God presented us life. Right now it’s like using a gadget you don't know much about. If we could have also had a charger for downtimes, some replacement parts that wear out and the ability to start all over again in case of a mess that would be great too. But right now, no one is listening. May be God needs a new Marketing director or maybe we need to privatize it all.

Moving onto the next...

Yes, I realize I sounded determined to keep my blog alive through my initial spurt of activity this year but is the inertia catching up now? No way!

A mother who fractured her back and my move kept me busy. So now I have officially changed countries and I am sitting in a different time zone and different climate type. Yes, this has happnened before. And I still remember the awesome feeling you get when on your first trip abroad you get on the plane and the pain of checking in baggage and getting through security is so much fun! The unbelievable thrill of taking off and then watching your city miniaturize in front of your eyes and then eating out of disposable plates the tasteless food with disposable cutlery (which you know won't cut the food), all has its charm. The most amazing part starts after landing, when you push through your baggage to emerge out of the crowd. You find your friend, family who came to pick you up at the airport and greet them with your victory smile. And then starts the journey from airport to your first destination. The first look at the new city, the new place, the different place unlike you have any so far, so different from home.

When you come to London, you expect the same. But hurray, what you find is another place full of your own kind of people and sometimes it feels like you travelled domestically to get here. This could be Chandigarh? Well, exaggeration aside. I am in the UK sometimes in London, sometimes in Bridgewater but at most times in UK.

Dear Blog, I will keep you posted.

The speakers are blasting, people are yelling on the street singing bhajan set on filmy tunes. I can't sleep so I am yelling too just that no one can hear and it is not as musical!

It is Mahashivratri today. Shiv ji's wedding celeberations are on. There is a Jagran happening in the next street which means a community event where the community better be present or it will spend the night just tossing in the bed because the noise will not let it sleep.

Continuing with the grumbling now. So, what is a jagran? Hammer in four poles, hog a street, set up a tent, put up a stage, get a generator and a dholki, some other instruments, a bad singer to whip religious emotions. This Bhajan singing is mostly shouting into a mic without sur. But one thing that can't be denied is that these people sing with a lot of passion and energy. Darn! it is so infectious. Some of the familiar tunes will strike a chord somewhere. If you have a favourite that wrenches your heart you might jump out of your bed and dance in the joy of the moment. I have a favourite that distracted me.Bum boley bum boley bum bum. The next moment, I saw mom looking at me and smiling. Well, I was still yelling but this time I was the bhajan I was singing along.